Stop the War in Central America

The piece of propaganda being examined is a poster created in 1986 to protest America’s involvement in Central America. The poster’s creator, Mark Vallen, was artistically inspired, in his own words, “by the Dia de los Muertos drawings of the great Mexican artist, José Guadalupe Posada , only [his] skeletons represent the Escuadrones de la Muerte (Squadrons of Death) unleashed by Reagan in the nations of El Salvador and Nicaragua” (Vallen). The poster depicts a trio of skeleton soldiers wielding guns menacingly towards the viewer, covered in fatigues depicting the dollar sign. Behind them in the sky are explosions, while on the ground lies a field of grave-shaped crosses. Text on the bottom of the poster mentions a “demonstration” in the form of a march and rally to take place at specific times.

The poster takes pains to associate the soldiers in the poster, whether American or one of the many paramilitaries supported by them (Contras, Atlacatl Battalion) with death and money, with the graves and the skeleton aspect linking the former, and the dollar-sign fatigues linking the latter. The harsh, militaristic, stenciled font on the poster, as well, helps to undergird a severe, martial sensibility, with their facing the viewer also helping to imply to the audience that, if something is not done, the forces of American empire could turn on them.As the Institute of Propaganda Analysis pointed out in the 1930s, the poster is using the propaganda tactic of transferral (“[carrying] over … something we [acknowledge to have authority] to something [we would] accept) (Jackall, 220) in reverse, with the positive connotation in this instance being replaced with the negative connotations the imagery links to our adventurism into Central America.

As the poster shows, the United States was involved in Central America to an unprecedented degree during this time, providing monetary and military aid to groups such as the Contras in Nicaragua and the El Salvadoran government, responsible for the infamous El Mozote massacre in 1981, and a “dirty war” against leftist insurrectionaries and dissidents. In fact, historian Greg Grandin has called this period and place a “workshop” of sorts, where America could simultaneously regain the pride it had lost in the Vietnam War, apply counterinsurgency measures it had learned in the time since, and reify control of American foreign policy by neoconservatives, who could be said to be the right-wing version of the New Left that emerged in the 1960s and 1970s (Grandin, 6).

This poster, although constructed for a one-day rally, manages to encapsulate a larger systemic criticism of American power abroad through emotionally-affecting imagery to an American in the mid-1980s.

Sources:

Grandin, Greg. Empire’s Workshop: Latin America, the United States, and the Rise of the New Imperialism. New York: Metropolitan Books, 2006.

Institute for Propaganda Analysis. “How to Detect Propaganda.” In Propaganda, ed. Robert Jackall. Wilmington, NY: New York University Press, 1995.